The proliferation of digital cameras, cellular phones equipped with digital cameras, video cameras and other imaging devices has led to a corresponding interest on the part of consumers in sharing their photographs and other media. While dedicated Web services exist to accept and serve consumers' uploaded camera shots, the necessary steps to prepare, upload and share that media may be inconvenient to some users.
Many users on the other hand may prefer or revert to sharing their digital photographs or other media by way of email, choosing to embed or attach the JPG or other digital photo files directly into email messages to friends and others. However, using ordinary email services as a vehicle to exchange digital photographs, video clips, audio clips or other media has significant drawbacks. For one, high-resolution digital photographs can reach several megabytes in size. Attempting to transmit files of that or greater size via an email service may bog the sender's email client down, or clog the recipient's inbox with content which takes a significant time to open. In cases large email attachments may not transmit at all.
Users may instead generate reduced resolution versions of photographs and other media to help alleviate those transmission and storage issues. Some email clients may likewise permit a user to embed or attach reduced resolution versions of images to outgoing email messages. Those various smaller versions may include for example thumbnail or Web-ready images, on the order of 100×100 pixels or more or less. While this permits the recipient to view a representation of the original image, that representation may be too low-resolution to permit printing or other manipulation of the image. Other problems and disadvantages exist in current media sharing technology.